This past Sunday night we went to eat dinner with friends. One topic of dinner conversation was the relationship of a corporate attorney with his admin. His admin apparently suffers from depression, which from time to time affects her ability to work. (Though he says her work overall clearly meets or exceeds his expectations.) She has taken medication, but discontinued the treatment earlier in the year on suggestion from her physician. Since then she has had intermittent trouble.
The actual case did not surprise me. The comments people made around the table led me to think that they had trouble, however, feeling empathy for depression sufferers. My sense is that everyone was talking sincerely without any knowledge that someone in their midst might have had personal experience with depression. In other words, they were not pulling my leg.
That made me think there must be large numbers, maybe even a majority, of people who literally go through life without seeing the human race as a failed experiment, without seriously weighing the pros and cons of suicide, without even necessarily spending much time in a fog of anxiety. Hard to believe, but perhaps true.
Either that or it was a sort of cerebral practical joke.
Figments of a lack of imagination